


something you later rely on

by wagamiller



Category: Line of Duty
Genre: Best Friends, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Related, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:54:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26256706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wagamiller/pseuds/wagamiller
Summary: "Come on, let’s get you home."Kate & Steve, after the events of the season three finale
Relationships: Steve Arnott & Kate Fleming, Steve Arnott/Kate Fleming
Comments: 10
Kudos: 55





	something you later rely on

**Author's Note:**

> I just binge-watched this show and can't believe there isn't more fic out there. Mother of God, where's the fandom?
> 
> I won't lie to you, this is basically just Kate & Steve having a nice big long chat and looking after each other after the events of the season three finale. Entirely your choice if you want to read it as two platonic best mates or two oblivious idiots who are maybe, a little bit, ever so slightly in love.
> 
> [This story touches really very briefly on the abuse storyline in s3 so if that's a problem for you, you might want to give this a miss.]

\--

Getting out of the cell is a hell of a lot easier than getting into it.

Steve fills in one form, signs his name twice and then the duty officer gives him a tight-lipped smile and a plastic bag of his belongings, and fucking hell, it’s really over.

He almost keels over.

He’s only trying to glance towards Kate but his whole body seems to go with his eyes and he ends up swaying on the spot, knocking his shoulder right into hers. She braces his weight without a word while he steadies himself and he’s so pathetically grateful – for that, for her, for the hint of fresh air from some distant doorway – that his tired eyes start to burn again. He wipes roughly at them, beyond caring who sees. No-one can bring themselves to look at him anyway, the uniforms are all skirting their eyes around or above like he isn’t here. Like they didn’t spit in the food they brought to his cell last night.

“You alright?” Kate asks quietly from the position she’s holding beside him, close as a shadow. 

Always the exception, she doesn’t seem to have a problem meeting his gaze. Those big familiar eyes of hers, soft with concern, are just about the only reason he can bring himself to say, “Yeah. I’m alright.”

She rolls her eyes. “Liar.”

For a change, Steve doesn’t mind the accusation.

\--

“When are you gonna tell me what the hell’s been going on?”

They’ve only made it as far as the car park.

Kate sighs heavily, clicking the key fob for her car before taking his bag and tossing it into the boot without a word.

“Kate?” Steve can’t keep the bite of impatience out of his voice. Doesn’t try, really.

“Yeah, alright.” Although she snaps back at him there’s a strain of something weary and wounded in her voice that the irritation can’t quite mask. Not from him anyway. “Give me a chance, mate.”

“Sorry,” he says, guilt crowding in ahead of his urgency. It’s not her fault that he’s tired and hungry and still sort of terrified, right at that basic level where it’s hard to compute that the fear isn’t necessary anymore. “I didn’t–” 

“It’s fine,” she says, waving away his apology. “I get it.”

Steve looks at her over the top of the car, cataloguing all the things he should’ve already seen – that heavy drop to her shoulders and the way she’s moving like every step aches. The price of his freedom has cost her something and the realisation chills him to the bone.

“What happened, Kate?” This time it’s a question, not a demand. “Please.”

“You’d better get in.” She nods towards her passenger door, flashing him a smile devoid of humour. “You’ll want to be sitting down when you hear this.”

He’s not sure how long they sit there in her car, engine off, windows down, while she lays it all out for him. The station’s underground car park smells of petrol and days-old rain, and by the time she’s finished Steve thinks he might be sick.

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“ _Shit_.”

Kate starts the engine, starts to slide into first gear. “I know.” 

“Wait,” he says, dropping his hand on top of hers before she can release the handbrake.

“What?”

“Just … thanks.” It’s not enough – it’ll never be enough – but it’s all he’s got. He squeezes her hand once before letting go. “That’s all.”

\--

“Hang on,” Steve says, just as they reach the main road. “You never said – what about Fairbanks? What’s the latest there?”

Kate breathes out sharply and for a second Steve doesn’t want to know the answer that’s coming.

“He didn’t just cover the abuse up,” she says, her eyes not leaving the road. “He was in on it, Steve. All of it.”

“Jesus.” His stomach turns over again, a sour taste creeping up the back of his throat. “What happened?”

“Joe made a positive ID but–”

Kate’s knuckles are white on the steering wheel.

“But what?”

“Fairbanks has started saying he’s got dementia. Unfit for trial.”

Steve knocks his head back against the head-rest, hard. “Bastard.”

“Yeah.”

They drive on in silence until the next red light, when Steve catches Kate looking across at him with an unreadable expression on her face.

“What?” 

She shrugs, eyes back on the road. “Nothing – just surprised you thought to ask about Fairbanks now, that’s all.”

“He was involved in child abuse, Kate. I’m not likely to forget.”

“No, I know, but you were just framed for a murder, mate,” she says. “I wouldn’t have blamed you if it slipped your mind for a bit.”

“Yeah, well it didn’t, alright?” he says, picking violently at a loose thread in the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “I promised Joe–”

“I know,” she says placatingly, and Steve’s irritation fizzles out as quickly as it sparked. “I know you did.” 

She glances over again and that look in her eyes is back, the one he can’t quite place. If he didn’t know better he’d say it could be pride. 

“You’re a good copper, Steve,” she says, after a moment. “Y’know that?”

It’s a simple statement delivered in that typically straightforward way of hers but Steve hasn’t slept in two days and she hasn’t looked at him with trust in her eyes in far, far longer, and suddenly he can’t seem to take a full breath.

“I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” he says, huffing a laugh even though he’s not sure he’s really joking.

“I mean it,” she says softly.

“Yeah, well,” he says, his voice barely there, “lucky for me so are you.”

Kate smiles at the brakelights of the car in front and some of the pressure in Steve’s chest melts away.

\--

There’s still a line of police tape across his front door.

Kate swears under her breath when she sees it. “That should’ve been removed. Sorry, mate.”

“It’s fine,” Steve says even though it really, really isn’t. 

Kate rips it off with more venom than was strictly necessary and he thinks he might love her for it.

Inside, the flat is stone cold and quiet but still crawling with the ghosts of all the people who walked through it while he was gone, their unknown hands sifting through the pieces of his life. Everything seems off kilter, picked up and put back down a fraction of a centimetre out of place. 

Steve wanders into the living room and over towards the mantelpiece, to the framed picture on the far left. It’s from New Year’s Eve; his arm is around Sam’s waist and she’s smiling only for him, oblivious to the picture being taken. He’s always loved this photo. If they’d needed to test it, Forensics would have found so many sets of his fingerprints on the frame, a record of all those times he straightened it, getting the angle just right. 

“D’you want me to call her for you?” Kate says, in the voice she usually saves for skittish witnesses. She comes to stand beside him, looking at the photo too. “Sam, I mean.”

“Pretty sure she dumped me yesterday.” He adds one more set of prints to the frame, picking it up and setting it face-down. “So no, thanks.”

“Christ’s sake, while you were in there?”

He shrugs, defending Sam out of habit more than anything else. “I suppose I’d just been arrested for murder. Can you blame her?”

“Yes, I bloody can,” Kate says, eyes blazing. “Bitch.”

“I thought you liked Sam?”

“I did!”

“Yeah.” He can’t seem to match Kate’s anger. The feeling is there somewhere, buried under the exhaustion and the ache of it all, just out of reach. “So did I.”

“I’m sorry, mate,” Kate says, her voice turning soft. She blows out a breath and it seems to take all her anger with it. “You deserved better.”

“Can we … not talk about this?” It’s all too much – her big sad eyes and the way she’s looking at him like he might shatter. It was better when she was ready to throw things. “Please?”

“Yeah,” she agrees, pretending not to notice when he wipes at the corner of his eye with the edge of his jumper. “‘Course.”

“Cheers.” He gives her a weak, grateful smile as he drops heavily onto the sofa. 

“Well then, if not that cow, what do you need?” Kate says, turning businesslike. “What first?”

“I–” Suddenly his brain can’t seem to keep up with the conversation. “What?” 

“Food? Sleep? Shower?” She flashes half a smile. “Me to piss off and leave you alone?”

Steve scrubs a hand over his unwashed hair. “Shower,” he settles on, “then maybe food.”

“And the pissing off?”

Kate shifts her weight awkwardly, braced for a dismissal, and he remembers that she almost died today. 

“Actually would you – would you hang around for a bit?”

Something that might be relief flashes across her face. “Course I can, mate.”

\--

Steve stands under the spray until the hot water runs out and then a good few minutes after that.

When he reappears back downstairs, he has wet hair and warm socks and he doesn’t feel like he might fall over anymore. 

“Alright?” Kate asks. She’s curled up on his sofa with a pen between her teeth and a three day old newspaper on her lap, open to the crossword.

“Alright,” he says. This time isn’t not a total lie.

“I’ll put the kettle on,” she says, getting up and tossing the paper at him. “You see if you can get fourteen across.”

She’s back by the time the crossword is finished, handing him a cup of tea that’s been brewed to exactly the colour Steve likes best. There’s a familiar, faint hint of sweetness to it, the remnants of sugar left on the spoon after she dropped some into her mug. It used to bother him, back when they first started working together, but these days his tea doesn’t taste quite right without it. 

Side by side on his couch, a packet of crisps open between them, they go through the finer points of it all again until Steve starts to wish he’d suggested something stronger than tea.

“What’ll you do now, d’you think?” Kate asks, when they’ve exhausted the topic of Dot’s duplicity. There’s an unusually nervous edge to her voice that he doesn’t recognise and doesn’t like. “You’ll come back to AC-12, right?”

“‘Course I will.” He looks over at her sharply, quietly pleased by the flash of relief that flits across her face. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Oh I don’t know … being accused of murder by your colleagues?” she says, sounding much more like herself. Taking the piss out of him always seems to have that effect. “Some people would fancy a chance of scenery after that y’know.”

Steve scoffs. “Yeah, well, not me. Besides, you exonerated me as well as accusing me so I think it evens out.”

“Fair point.” 

“I suppose it’s not totally up to me though,” he says, shifting uncomfortably as the thought arises. “I’ll have to see what the gaffer says.”

“‘See you on Monday’ I’d imagine.”

“You think? I know I fucked some things up–”

“Come on, there’s a bloody big difference between a few errors in judgement and a murder, Steve.”

“Not sure the gaffer would agree,” Steve says, only half joking.

“When it comes to you, I reckon he would.” The absolute certainty in her words goes some way to calming his skittish nerves. “Look, you didn’t see him after your interview, mate – he was gutted. He’s as relieved as I am that it was all bullshit, trust me.”

“And it was _all_ bullshit, y’know,” he says, even as his skin crawls with the humiliation of bringing this up. “The Lindsay Denton stuff too, I mean.”

“Look, we don’t have to–”

“No, listen, I know what that tape sounded like, I get that,” he goes on, the words tumbling out of him in a rush, “but I wasn’t lying to you when I said I didn’t have sex with her.” 

He clenches his shaking hand into a fist at his side when he’s finished, looking at her out of the corner of his eye and trying to pretend that he isn’t. He doesn’t know why it matters so much, why he chose to pick at this particular scab in the first place, but now that he has it feels like his whole world hinges on what she says next.

Kate warms her hands on the remnants of heat from her now empty mug. “Steve–”

“I know I messed up,” he interrupts, not quite ready to lose her, if that’s what’s about to happen. Panic spreads like fire in his veins at the thought. “I’m not saying I didn’t–”

“Steve!” Her raised voice shuts him up.

He risks a proper look at her and there’s something so comfortingly familiar about the look on her face, exasperation warmed by real fondness, that he starts to relax even before she says, “I believe you.”

He runs a tired hand over his face, letting out a shaky breath. 

“Just…” Kate’s mouth twitches. “No more undercover for you, eh?”

“Yeah, I’ll leave that to you from now on,” he says, matching her quiet laugh with one of his own. “If the boss lets me back to work, that is.”

“He’d better,” she says, “I’m not sorting this whole bloody conspiracy out on my own.”

Even now, exhausted as he is, Steve can’t seem to resist pulling at the threads of it all. “Do you actually reckon the dying declaration will be any use?” he wonders aloud. “To find who Dot was working under, I mean?”

“I don’t know, really,” Kate says, “he was pretty out of it by the end. But he managed to name Fairbanks, so there’s that at least. It’s got to help the prosecution.”

“Bloody typical of Dot, this is,” Steve says, resisting the childish urge to fold his arms. “I can’t even hate him now. Not completely, anyway.”

“He had a bit of a sad life really, when you think about it,” she says, something like sympathy in her voice. “I reckon they’ve probably had their claws in him since he was really young and he just couldn’t see a way out.”

“Besides framing me you mean?” Steve says, crumpling the now empty crisp packet with a bit more force than necessary. He tosses it onto the coffee table where it unfolds noisily. “He knew what–”

“Look, I’m not defending him,” she says quickly. “God, what those people did, what they’re still getting away with, it’s sick.”

“And he knew all about it! He watched us run round in all these investigations and the whole time–”

“I know, I know.” Kate says, running a hand through her short hair and pulling it tight. She sits back and lets her head fall heavily against the couch, as if all the fight left in her has drained away in an instant. “But then...”

“But then he saved your life,” Steve supplies.

“After he tried to ruin yours.” She blows out a heavy breath. “Christ, what a mess.”

He shifts slightly to look at her in profile, the elegant lines of her familiar face held carefully still. Too carefully. He waits, not saying anything else, until she gives in to the weight of his attention and drops her chin, turning her head so they’re face to face. Up close like this, Kate’s eyes are soft and heavy lidded, weary with something that seems to go beyond physical exhaustion. 

“Are you alright, mate?” he asks.

“I’m fine,” she says, like he half-knew she would. “The car only gave me a bump, that’s all–”

“You know that’s not what I meant,” he says softly, still not looking away.

Kate wilts a little under his scrutiny. He knows she could probably conceal all this if she wanted to. Her undercover training would be more than good enough to help her mask all the things he can read on her face – the tiredness, the sorrow and all the other remnants of the day’s terrors. It’s her choice not to hide from him and all he wants in the world is to try and live up to the privilege. It’s fucking terrifying.

“Kate.” He says her name quietly, heavy with concern. 

“I …” She takes a breath and when she releases it there’s a slight shake in her sigh. “I’ll be alright.”

The future tense feels like the closest thing he’s going to get to an answer so he doesn’t push any further, just nods. 

“Course you will,” he says, like it goes without saying. 

At that, the sadness in her eyes starts to soften into something else entirely.

“I’m really glad you’re not a murderer, Steve,” she says, her lips lifting into a tired smile. It’s tiny, barely there, but entirely for him.

“Yeah,” he says, his chest tight with the weight of all the things they never say to each other. “Me too.”

“You’d have been a really shit one too,” she adds, faintly amused. “I mean your own service weapon and your own car? Jesus Christ.”

“If it wasn’t for you though…” He runs his hand over the fabric of the couch to reassure himself of where he is. Home. Safe. Warm. Not alone. “I really thought I was finished, Kate.”

“Ah, don’t do that to yourself,” she says, waving him off. “I was just doing my job, that’s all.”

“That’s not all,” he goes on, glancing at the face-down picture on the mantelpiece. “I owe you one. More than one.”

“Shut up,” she says, bumping her elbow against his. “Partners don’t keep score, alright?”

It’s dangerous, how much his heart lifts at that. “Partners?” 

“Partners.” She rolls her eyes, fighting a smile as she kicks her feet up onto his coffee table. “Obviously.”

They sit side by side in silence, not quite touching but close enough that Steve can feel the warmth of her beside him, solid and steady and not going anywhere at all. It feels like far more than he deserves.

“I missed you,” he says softly, after a moment.

“Oh, come off it,” she scoffs, “you were only in there for–”

“What’s not what I meant.”

“I know,” she says, so much quieter now. He doesn’t dare look at her. “I missed you too, you daft idiot.”

\--

The crisps don’t quite cut it, in the end.

“So – one portion of chips, two steak pies and a carton of curry sauce?” Kate says, pausing in the doorway.

“Sure you don’t want me to go?”

“Steve,” she says, pulling a face, “no offence, mate, but you look like shit. I’m not sure you’d make it there and back.”

“Charming.”

She shrugs.

“At least let me pay. I think my wallet’s in that plastic bag somewhere.”

“It’s fine,” she says, waving a hand. “I’ve borrowed that fiver out your gym bag.”

There’s a moment of absolute silence and then her lips twitch and she says, “What? Too soon?”

Steve doesn’t remember the last time he laughed so hard.

\--


End file.
